English Literature
Contact Donovan Rees
British literature and history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on poetry, fiction, and drama.
We usually have a selection of literary works from the STC and Wing period (i.e. before 1701), and a broad range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and poetry, particularly the Romantics. We also have a selection of historical manuscripts, prints and broadsides, and works in translation.
Among important works which have passed through our hands are the editor's presentation copy of Milton's Lycidas, Swift's Modest Proposal, the autograph draft of Byron's She walks in beauty, the autograph manuscript of Jane Austen's only play Sir Charles Grandison, Dickens’s copy of Vanity Fair, Trollope's classical library, and, over the years, some fifty Shakespeare First Folios.
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[POPE, Alexander.]
Sober Advice from Horace, to the young Gentleman about Town, As deliver’d in his second Sermon. Imitated in...
London: Printed for T. Boreman … and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, [1734].
First editions of Pope’s Sober Advice from Horace and Universal Prayer.
£650
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POPE, Alexander.
An Essay on Man, in four Epistles to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke …
London: Printed for Robert Jennings … by James Moyes … 1819.
A very fine edition, one of two hundred copies according to Lowndes. The four plates in the text were engraved for a forthcoming parallel-text English–Portuguese edition published by Charles Whittington – the prints here being proofs before lettering. Their inclusion along with ‘the...
£450
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POPE, Alexander.
The Works … Vol. I [–VI]. With explanatory Notes and Additions never before printed.
London, Printed for B. Lintot, 1736 [Vol. II. Printed for L. Gilliver 1735; Vol. III. Printed for H. Lintot, 1736; Vol. IV. Printed...
A fine set of the bibliographically complicated small octavo Works, including the scarce supplementary Vol II. Part II.
£1750
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POPE, [Alexander].
Of the Use of Riches, an Epistle to the Right Honorable Allen Lord Bathurst.
London, J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1732.
First edition, first issue, with p. 13 uncorrected and the erratum on p. 20.
£200
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POPE, Alexander.
Windsor-Forest. To the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdown …
London: Printed for Bernard Lintott … 1713.
First edition of Pope’s second separately published poem, preceded by An Essay on Criticism in 1711. Written in the tradition that young poets begin with pastoral verse, Windsor-Forest, with its epigraph from Virgil’s Eclogues, was the poem that first won Swift’s regard and...
£2750
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POPE, Alexander.
The first Satire of the second Book of Horace, imitated in a Dialogue between Alexander Pope, of Twickenham …...
London: Printed by L. G. and sold by A. Dodd … E. Nutt … and by the Booksellers of London and Westminster. 1733.
First edition, second impression, of the first of Pope’s Horatian imitations, written from his sickbed in response to the controversy over his Epistle to Burlington.
£150
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POPE, Alexander.
Of false Taste. An Epistle to the right honourable Richard Earl of Burlington. Occasion’d by his publishing...
London: Printed for L. Gilliver … 1731 [1732].
1. Third edition of Of false Taste, published on 15 January 1732, adding Pope’s long letter to Burlington in reply to ‘the clamour rais’d about this epistle’. This is the first of three issues, with the misprint ‘Cielings’ on p. 11. Griffith 267; Foxon P912.
£850
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[POPE, Walter.]
The Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall: containing the history of his Life and Death. Whereunto are annexed his last...
London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1670.
First(?) edition of a partly fictitious and often satirical life of the highwayman Claude Duval, published shortly after his execution in 1670. This is the more substantial of two opportunistic biographies, between them the main sources of information about him, though by no means entirely trustworthy. ...
£750
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PORTER, Anna Maria.
The Village of Mariendorpt. A Tale … in four Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown … 1821
First edition of a rather melodramatic novel set in Bavaria towards the end of the Thirty Years War. It proved just what Longman was looking for, and a sequel, Roche-Blanche, followed in 1822.
£1200
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PORTER, Jane.
Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1824.
First edition. One of the earliest exponents of the historical novel, Porter enjoyed enormous popularity during her lifetime. Duke Christian of Luneburg was her sixth book, which she modestly described as ‘a little traditionary [sic] sketch of an illustrious hero’. Set in sixteenth-century...
£650
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PORTER, Jane and Anna Maria.
Coming out; and the Field of Forty Footsteps … In three Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1828.
First edition; the first two volumes comprise ‘Coming Out; a Tale of the nineteenth century’ by Anna Maria Porter, the final volume is her sister’s ‘Field of Forty Footsteps; a Tale of the seventeenth century’. ‘Either would have made a three-decker all by itself’ (Wolff).
£650
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POSTEL, Guillaume.
De originibus, seu, de varia et potissimum orbi Latino ad hanc diem incognita, aut inconsyderata historia,...
Basel, Johannes Oporinus, [1553].
First edition of Postel’s investigations into the original language as a means to regain the primordial unity of mankind.
£3500
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[POUND.]
Ezra Pound at Seventy.
[New York, New Directions, 1955.]
A small celebratory booklet printing tributes by Auden, Cummings, Eliot, Hemingway (‘Will gladly pay tribute to Ezra but what I would like to do is get him the hell out of St. Elizabeth’s’), Archibald Macleish, Jose de Pina Martins, Marianne Moore, Norman Pearson, Spender, and Edith Sitwell.
£30
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POUND, Ezra.
The Letters … 1907-1941. Edited by D. D. Paige
… London, Faber & Faber, [1951].
First English edition, an association copy.
£150
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POUND, Ezra.
The Classic Anthology defined by Confucius.
London, Faber & Faber, 1955.
First English edition, first printing, comprising sheets of the Harvard University Press edition (1954) with a cancel Faber title-page.
£175
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POUND, Ezra.
Section: Rock-Drill. 85-95 de los Cantares.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1955.
First edition, No. 347 of 500 copies, inscribed on the front free endpaper ‘To Geoffrey, “in alta stima” from D. / 6. 7. 56.’, with Bridson’s note identifying this as the actor and producer Denis Goacher.
£450
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POUND, Ezra.
H. S. Mauberley, tradotto di Giovanni Giudici con tre disegni inedita di Jean Cocteau.
Milan, all’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.
First edition, no. 141 of 1000 copies, a parallel-text Italian translation of Pound’s modernist masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920).
£100
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POUND, Ezra.
Thrones. 96-109 de los cantares.
Milan, All’insegna del pesce d’oro [Scheiwiller], 1959.
First edition, no. 10 of 300 copies, one of the early copies with a misprint in l.9 on p. 85, cancelled in manuscript by the publisher.
£650
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POUND, Ezra.
Selected Poems.
The New Classics Series. [New York, New Directions, 1949.]
First edition, inscribed in a characteristic mix of the formal and the faux-Cockney ‘Geoffrey Bridson certified + worthy owner hereof. / To which mi ’and [i.e. my hand]/ Ezra Pound / 9 A[ugust?] ’56’. The book was given to the BBC Broadcater D.G. Bridson on the occasion of his visit...
£2750
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POUND, Ezra.
Quia Pauper amavi.
London, The Egoist Ltd, [1919].
First edition, one of 500 ordinary copies (there were also 100 signed copies on handmade paper’, inscribed ‘Bridson’s copy / 11 Ap ’59 / Ezra Pound’. This work contained the first English publication of Cantos I–III, not printed in that order.
£1750